How To Make An Easy, Yet Impressive, Gingerbread House
Houses come in many shapes and sizes, but only one features frosting, cookies and candy – the gingerbread house! While spending more time at home this holiday season, making gingerbread houses provides priceless memories. For hands-on holiday fun, gather the family to draw up blueprints, then construct the best gingerbread houses on the block!
Use the tips below to create eye-catching holiday masterpieces and enter them into our gingerbread house contest!
The Flavorful Foundation
Homemade gingerbread fills the kitchen with fragrant aromas and is a snap to bake! To make the dough:
- Gather the ingredients and amounts needed based on the recipe you’re following. Typical ingredients include brown sugar, all-purpose flour, eggs, baking soda, salt, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, ground nutmeg and molasses.
- Roll the dough into discs, then refrigerate overnight.
- Use house-shaped cutters or look online for foolproof patterns of proportional house pieces.
- Cut out the structure, bake and cool completely.
Building and decorating work best if you bake the dough one day, then assemble the next. If you don’t have time to bake homemade gingerbread, your family can still enjoy this timeless tradition using gingerbread kits or graham crackers. Constructing gingerbread houses, whether scratch-made or store-bought, is guaranteed family fun!
Endless Possibilities for Décor
When building your house, you don’t want it to crumble or tumble. Royal icing is strong, reliable and will hold everything together. Use white royal icing to assemble your house and give it a stunning snow-covered look, or mix it with food coloring for a pop of color!
Next, let your imagination run wild! Decorate your house with sweets such as licorice, jellybeans, gumdrops, colored chocolates, bite-size cookies, miniature marshmallows, candy canes and peppermint candies. Add windows with icing, make wreaths out of chocolates or create a gumdrop path! Browse examples of designs to inspire your own unique creation.
Building gingerbread houses fosters creativity, with everyone on the construction crew contributing fun ideas for creating your holiday masterpiece. Find more holiday recipes and activity ideas at pricechopperready.com!
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